A letter to an American friend,by the Rev. R.J. Campbell ...

A LETTER TO
AN AMERICAN FRIEND

BY

THE REV. R. J. CAMPBELL, M.A.

Vicar of Christ Church, Westminster;
Sometime Minister of the City Temple, London

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Price, Ten Cents

Walter Clinton Jackson Library

The Uniyersity of North Carolina at Greensboro

Special Collections & Rare Books

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A LETTER TO AN AMERICAN FRIEND

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A LETTER TO
AN AMERICAN FRIEND

BY

THE REV. R. J. CAMPBELL, M.A.

Vicar of Christ Church, Westminster;
Sometime Minister of the City Temple, London

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

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A LETTER TO AN
AMERICAN FRIEND

AT the moment of writing we have reached
the gravest crisis of the world-war. Rus-
sia lies prostrate at the feet of the common enemy;
the Ukraine has not only made peace but is pre-
paring to receive aid in her struggle against the
Bolshevik Government; Roumania is isolated and
helpless in presence of the convulsions of her once
mighty neighbour, and may be compelled to get
the best terms she can from the conqueror, as the
Entente Powers are through force of circum-
stances unable to render her any immediately effec-
tive assistance; Poland, Courland, Lithuania, Fin-
land— all are at the disposal of their German mili-
tary masters. Plainly, for the time being at any
rate. Eastern Europe has been swept within the
orbit of German military domination, with all
that that portentous fact implies.

If the war were to end with this situation in
being and likely to be perpetuated, the outlook
for the future would be dark indeed; civilisa-
tion would be at the mercy of a system more sin-

2 A LETTER TO

ister, more menacing, more deadly in relation to
all that makes for freedom and true manhood than
was the ascendancy of Napoleon at its greatest;
there has never been anything like it in the world's
history for sheer brutal effectiveness, inspired and
directed with a concentration of purpose and a sci-
entific efficiency hitherto unmatched in the New
World or the Old. The Baltic and the Black
Seas are simply to become German lakes; the re-
sources of the vast region that extends eastward
towards the Pacific, and southward towards the
Levant on the one side and the Persian Gulf on
the other, will be exploited forthwith by the di-
rectors of German policy for the gaining of the
ultimate ends for which they deliberately set the
world In a blaze.

The danger Is real, terrible, overwhelming.
The immediate hope of averting it rests with the
line of brave men who stand in the mud of France
and Flanders, awaiting the onslaught of the en-
emy hordes hastening westwards flushed with tri-
umph and inflamed with confidence in the invin-
cibility of the German sword.

Will they be able to endure the shock? Who
knows? They are outnumbered for the first time
since the early days of the war; they have been
fighting for three and a half years ; our own guns,
seized from the Russians, are turned against them ;
every devilish device that ingenuity can suggest

AN AMERICAN FRIEND 3

or wickedness employ will be drawn upon to their
undoing. We here in England watch, and hope,
and pray.

American soldiers are now side by side with the
sons of France and Britain in the trenches. They
will bear a full and increasing share in the glories
and perils of the dreadful hour that is upon us,
our cause theirs and their spirit ours; and what-
ever comes of the conflict in which this comrade-
ship has for the first time been achieved, it would
be impossible to lay too much stress upon the far-
reaching significance for mankind of the one lumi-
nous fact that the Stars and Stripes are for the
first time flying upon a European battlefield.
What does this mean? How does it come that
both Great Britain and America have abandoned
their traditional poHcy and been swept into a
colossal war on the Continent of Europe?

Neither country was organised for war, and so
far as the mass of the people was concerned, in
both countries alike, nothing could have been less
expected. The British democracy would not
stand for anything like a military adventure on
a large scale outside its own borders; no states-
man could have persuaded it to do so; and had
anyone in this island at the beginning of 19 14 de-
clared that the British people at home and be-
yond the seas would be called upon within the
ensuing twelve months to raise an army of siy

4 A LETTER TO

million men and to pledge all its resources for a
Continental struggle, he would have been univer-
sally derided, in so far as he was able to obtain
a hearing at all. The same applies mutatis mu-
tandis to the United States.

What then, we may legitimately ask, has been
the issue at stake which was able to effect so
great a change, and what were the factors which
compelled the older nation to realise it first? In
other words, what fundamentally is the cause in
which the great democracies of East and West
are now engaged together and must stand or fall
together ?

We here, in the land of the Mother of Par-
liaments, desire that there should be no misap-
prehension on this point on the part of our Amer-
ican brothers, and therefore we address you. You
are our main hope, the hope of civilisation it-
self; to many of us the United States are a sort
of City of Refuge, the very thought of which
sustains us in our darkest trials. Were we to
lose in this fearful struggle, and were our ancient
homeland to become indeed the vassal of Ger-
many, as General Bernhardi cynically anticipates,
it is to the United States that we should turn as
the one shining spot on earth whereon a man
trained in British traditions would still be able
to live a free man's life; we should come to you
and make our abode under your flag.

AN AMERICAN FRIEND 5

It is not for nothing then that you and we are
ranged shoulder to shoulder in a common effort
to stem a black tide of evil that is threatening to
engulf all that is fairest and most beautiful in
human relations. We want you to understand us,
to see how essentially we are at one in our aims,
to remove any misgivings that might exist in your
minds as to our disinterestedness and our readi-
ness to co-operate with you in realising the ideal
with which you entered the war. Much that we
know about liberty you taught us; much that you
know about justice we taught you. We did you
wrong in the past, but the spirit in which you re-
sisted and overcame us your fathers bore from
our shores to yours. To-day you are no more
truly a democracy than we ; in some ways we excel
you, for there is no land on earth where the value
of the individual man is better understood, or his
liberty of speech and act more jealously cherished,
than in Great Britain. And your mental and spir-
itual climate is so much like ours that we can
breathe your air as though it were native to us, as
in a sense indeed it is.

Your President speaks for us all when he de-
fines the ideals for which we are contending in
common. Our hearts thrill responsive to his no-
ble utterance ; he expresses what we feel as he ex-
presses what you feel, and we remember with
pride the stock whence he derives. There is an

6 A LETTER TO

ancient church in a little city in a northern county
of England whose proudest boast it is that Presi-
dent Wilson's grandfather once ministered therein
and spoke the Word of God with authority to his
people. Their grandsons and great-grandsons
remember that with gladness when the Word of
God comes to us across the Atlantic from the
lips of the President of the United States to the
stricken peoples of Europe to-day.

We were in the war before you because we were
next door to the peril. We thought you slow to
realise it; some of us said in our haste that you
were selfishly taking advantage of it to enrich
yourselves in your false security on the other side
of the ocean. It was not true; few of us ever be-
lieved it true; but there was colour for the ac-
cusation, and our hearts grew bitter within us as
our blood and treasure poured forth in an ever-
growing flood and you showed no sure sign of
coming to our aid. Instead, your spokesmen
preached to us as though we and our enemies stood
on the same moral level and were equally cul-
pable before the bar of history. You have
learned better since then, and so have we. You
know now that we were fighting your battle as
well as our own, and we know that you were not
only ready and willing to fight your own but ours
once you were convinced that ours was the cause
of mankind.

AN AMERICAN FRIEND 7

It would have been your turn next if we had
gone under, for Prussianism and Americanism are
irreconcilable; if, to use President Wilson's words,
the world is to be made safe for democracy, Prus-
sianism and its brood of hell must be rendered
powerless to do evil henceforth. It took time to
bring this home to the American mind, and no
wonder, but when you understood the issue for
what it really was you instantly outstripped us all
in the thoroughness with which you rose to meet
it. We are lost in wonder and admiration as we
watch what you are doing and note the spirit in
which you are doing it; our action has been inef-
fective in comparison all along, and you have in-
spired us with new zeal and energy to do what
must be done and bear what must be borne till
the stem task is accomplished and the sorely
stricken world is once more at peace. Truly at
last, in well-worn phrase, has a new world been
called in to redress the balance of the old. Never
in all history has such an amazing and epoch-mak-
ing reversal of a national tradition been decided
upon as that which was yours when you inter-
vened with strong hand in European politics. It
was an act of noble disinterestedness, of lofty
courage and faith, which ha» given you the moral
leadership of the world.

We are not in a position to reproach you for
your slowness in comi g to our aid; what else

8 A LETTER TO

could we expect? Your liberties were won from
us at the point of the sword; your history pivots
upon your emancipation from British monarchical
control. We are still the greatest imperial power
in the world, and to every citizen of the mighty
American Commonwealth this is a knotty fact
which needs a good deal of explaining when we
profess that our cause is the cause of human free-
dom and brotherhood. Your statesmen, such as
Mr. Roosevelt, have been generous enough to say
that on the whole we have used our power wisely
and well, and that we are the greatest civilising
agency among the nations from this point of
view; to us as an essentially maritime people has
fallen, less by design than by force of circum-
stances, the task of preserving order and intro-
ducing the arts of peace amongst backward races
not yet ready for full self-government as under-
stood in the great democracies of four continents.
May we not fairly claim that we have done the
work creditably? Where the British flag flies,
there tyranny is unknown ; justice, tranquillity, and
individual liberty are taken for granted; the wel-
fare of those under our charge is not subordi-
nated to any less worthy object. In all this we
can boldly challenge comparison with any other
Power on earth, and especially with our foes.
Let any reasonable man ask himself what would
be the fate of Egypt and India if they were left

AN AMERICAN FRIEND 9

to themselves or fell under German rule ; let any
man inquire what they were before we went there,
and what they are now.

Still more, let any man from any quarter of the
globe pay a visit to any one of the rapidly grow-
ing English-speaking communities coming within
our imperial system but possessing local auton-
omy. What will he find? He will find that our
only bond of empire is that of the loyalty and de-
votion of these far-spread children of Great Brit-
ain to their motherland. He need not even con-
fine himself to those British territories where our
tongue is spoken — ours and yours. South Africa
is as free as New York, and has a government
composed mainly of representatives of a Dutch-
speaking race. Who could have believed it pos-
sible that the generalissimo of the Boer forces
which fought against us in 1900 should now be
Prime Minister of a South African Union whose
armies, Dutch and British alike, are fighting on
our side? There is no compulsion about it; theirs
is a State within a Union not even so closely knit
together as that which binds California to New
England.

The miracle is easy of explanation; we enjoy
no liberty ourselves which is not also theirs. The
vast Dominion of Canada, with its boundless po-
tentialities for the future, lies along your bor-
der; what have you to say of that? Why should

10 A LETTER TO

Canadians trouble to fight for England? Your
Monroe doctrine would protect them if there were
no British Navy. We possess no authority over
them that you do not. They are in no danger
from you — if any fact were needed to demonstrate
the essential difference between the ideal of gov-
ernment which you and we possess In common
and the evil thing against which we are contend-
ing for mastery, it would be supplied by those four
thousand miles of frontier without a single fort
or gunboat In its whole extent — for they and you
are brothers with no fell designs upon each other.
No, they fight for England because England to
the ends of the earth is the centre and symbol of
good order broad-based upon the will of the peo-
ple. If England fell, that principle would be so
much the weaker, so much the poorer in the coun-
cils of the nations, that not even you could sin-
gle-handed restore it to its place.

Further, let it be frankly admitted that we are
in the war, not simply as you are for disinterested
reasons, but also because we had a vital stake In
the Immediate issue. Nor need we be ashamed of
this. The present writer has no sympathy with
the view so frequently put forward that Britain
drew the sword solely to protect a little Inde-
pendent nation barbarously violated and despoiled
by a mighty bullying neighbour. It is true that
we did come to the aid of maltreated Belgium;

AN AMERICAN FRIEND 11

it is true that it was the q^nical invasion of Bel-
gium more than anything else which within twen-
ty-four hours swung British opinion into line with
the Government in determining to declare war
upon Germany. Had the German General Staff
had the sense to leave Belgium alone until their
designs against France and Russia had been ac-
complished, it would have been impossible to se-
cure a united front in Great Britain for a war
policy; the rape of Belgium did what not all the
warnings of statesmen and publicists could do in
making us as one man on the subject of resist-
ance to German aggression.

The same might be said of the Government it-
self— liberal and pacifist in principle, no member
of it more pronouncedly so than the present
Prime Minister. It was only because the Gov-
ernment saw that there was no way out, save with
dishonour, that the famous ultimatum was issued
that threw the resources of the British Empire
into the scale against Prussianism. Belgium did
it. Belgium did it, chiefly no doubt because of the
horror and indignation excited in this country at
the spectacle of a weak nation wickedly attacked
by a strong one, but also because of what it por-
tended. We saw with startling suddenness that
the fate of Belgium was only preliminary to our
own. We saw that we could not afford to leave
the Prussian master of Belgium nor yet of France.

12 A LETTER TO

To stand by and allow France to be crushed would
have been equally fatal, though it would have
taken us longer to see it. Belgium apart, we had
to fight or perish.

In all this we but anticipated the decision to
which you later came. You are chivalrously fight-
ing the battle of humanity, not your own; you have
risen up as the champion of the independence of
small nations against overweening brutal might;
you are battling to overthrow the system that
threatens these. But a clear perception of this
object and a consciousness of being chiefly moved
by it do not make it any the less true that if the
European democracies were crushed your turn
would come next. The Prussian war lords have
scarcely taken the trouble to conceal their purpose
in this regard. Probably you would have held
your own, but at what a risk !

Nor do we f9rget that when you finally threw
in your lot with us you did so mainly because the
moral consciousness of the entire American peo-
ple was revolted by German methods of making
war. Like all decent people you found it hard to
believe that the tales could be true which reached
your shores concerning the cold-blooded applica-
tion of the deliberate policy of frightfulness to
the helpless inhabitants of invaded lands, the cruel-
ties perpetrated upon prisoners of war, the bom-
bardment of open towns, the use of poison gas

AN AMERICAN FRIEND 13

and other infamies in the field, and, last but not
least, the unrestricted U-boat warfare. Most of
all, perhaps, were you influenced by the gradual
realisation that the ugly monster which had been
set loose in Central Europe was a beast with
whom moral considerations did not count. The
Prussian military autocracy could not be trusted
to keep faith with anybody. Lying, trickery, dev-
ilish intrigue were its most ordinary weapons, to
be used without scruple against friend and foe
alike. The plighted word meant nothing except
as a move in the game; it could be repudiated at
any moment when it paid to do so, as your diplo-
matists and statesmen in their dealings with Ger-
many have had to learn over and over again to
their cost.

But now that you are with us heart and soul in
resistance to the greatest organised evil where-
with human society at large has ever been men-
aced, let us ask whether there are not still more
fundamental issues involved than any of the fore-
going, though indissolubly bound up with them.
It is only gradually that we ourselves have come
to recognise clearly what these are; once up
against the issues you have been quicker to en-
visage them than we. They can best be consid-
ered in connection with the general question of the
relation of the ideal of democracy to that of
individual well-being. The Germanic alliance

14 A LETTER TO

stands frankly for autocracy, that of the Entente
Powers for democracy. Put in another form, we
might say that at its best the Prussian idea is that
of paternal government, ours fraternal. Each
has its special advantages and its special dangers,
but spiritually there can be no question as to which
can show the higher results.

The Prussian system has done wonderful things
beyond all power of computation. It has not been
modelled on Eastern despotism, like that of its
Turkish ally, but has consistently sought the im-
mediate welfare of the governed. This much
may be ungrudgingly admitted. German imperial
administration is uncorrupt, far-seeing, efficient,
thorough. It has given to German citizens the
best general education in the world and has car-
ried specialisation to the highest point. It has
encouraged and rewarded industry and ability with
no niggard hand; it has fostered research, enter-
prise, trade and commerce to a degree unknown
in other countries. It has shown the rest of the
world what organisation could do in the develop-
ment of the internal and external resources of the
State. Alone among the non-popular forms of
government which have survived from the Mid-
dle Ages it has gone far to justify itself by re-
sults; it has undoubtedly placed the German peo-
ple in possession of a wealth and prosperity which
could hardly have been won otherwise in the same

AN AMERICAN FRIEND 15

time, and it is this beyond doubt which has ren-
dered Kaiserism and its adjuncts acceptable to the
great mass of the German-speaking subjects of
William the Second. German imperialism is the
only autocracy that can offer a serious challenge
to democratic ideals; it has succeeded.

But at what a price ! No virile race on God's
earth is kept in political tutelage like the German
people. They have sold their birthright for a
mess of pottage; they were nearer to liberty of
soul in 1848, when they all but overthrew mon-
archy, than they are to-day. They do not under-
stand how free nations feel in relation to life;
they are content to be told what to do and say, to
have restrictions placed upon their freedom of ac-
tion in a thousand ways which would be utterly
intolerable to any free-spirited folk. They are
accustomed to be regulated, bullied, moved about
like pawns by a master hand. They do not re-
sent it; they are accustomed to it, trained in it,
fashioned by it; they see what great things this
paternal authority has done for them and judge it
accordingly. If it failed them they would rebel,
but it has not failed — yet; on the contrary, it has
been a glittering success, and it suits them.

There is very little to show for the belief en-
tertained in some quarters that the German pub-
lic disapproves the ruthless policy of its rulers.
The children of the men who fought the vie-

16 A LETTER TO

torious campaign of 1870 have been brought up
to breathe the very air of militarism; the swag-
gering Prussian officer is their ideal of manhood;
they have been made hard, aggressive, morally
insensitive. Nothing will deliver them from this
obsession of an evil spirit but the collapse of the
system that fostered it, and that collapse can only
come about by the bitter experience of defeat in
the field. Let it once be proved that the Ger-
man imperial military organisation is not invin-
cible against the rest of the world in arms and
its doom is sealed.

This will be hard to accomplish, for autocracy
has this initial advantage over democracy, that
it can focus its strength more quickly and thor-
oughly to a given end. The thesis of De Toc-
queville, that democracy is the most difficult and
exacting of all forms of government because it
demands more from the individual citizen, is well
illustrated in this war. Democracy as a principle
is no magic passport to well-being, for everything
depends on the spirit in which it is worked. Its
main reliance is not on authority backed by force
nor on governmental machinery, but on the wis-
dom and disciplined self-restraint of its members.
The individual is summoned to do his thinking
^or himself, and to decide along with his fellows
the crucial issues of State policy. The national
destiny is committed to his hands, to make or mar.

AN AMERICAN FRIEND 17

Good government, like all other moral values,
can be enjoyed by him only at the cost of unceas-
ing vigilance. In complex questions the initiative
may have to come from the executive, but the
executive is itself elected, and its character is there-
fore determined by the prevailing standards of
social and political righteousness. The admira-
tions and preferences of the individual are mir-
rored in the type of leader that he chooses to
place in power.

This has two consequences. First, democracy,
founding its political creed on belief in the moral
resources of the individual citizen, must regard
as all-important the tasks of education, religious,
moral, and social. Secondly, the requirements of
statesmanship in a democracy are greater, not less,
than in an autocracy. In proportion as the aims
are higher and wider, the problems are more
complex and difficult. Though the elected rulers
have less independent power, they have the more
onerous task of enlightening public opinion and
of enlisting its support in all their projects. De-
mocracy forbids the drawing of any Bismarckian
distinction between the morality of the individual
and the morality of the State. Such a distinction
is always based on the contention that the ruler
is a trustee and has therefore no right to practise
at the expense of his Fatherland the Christian
virtues of forbearance and justice towards other"

18 A LETTER TO

States. In democracy, on all crucial questions of
international as of national policy, the individual
citizens decide ; and, as they are disposing of them-
selves in relation to others, they are subject to
the same moral laws as in their individual deal-
ings between man and man. They can confer on
their representatives no right to do for the State
what their conscience would forbid them to do in
their own private interests.

The first condition of such democratic govern-
ment is the liberty of the individual. The passion
for liberty is equally strong in Britain and in
America. Political liberty for both dates from
Magna Charta, and they share in common the
body of English Common Law. Trusting to moral
rather than material forces, to men rather than
to institutions, democracy cannot be preached as
a merely political programme or as a panacea : it
is an ideal of life. For the same reason it Is
missionary and propagandist; it imposes duties
upon the individual citizen in relation to the in-
ternal welfare of other political communities than
his own.

It was the recognition of this principle that
compelled the United States to draw the sword
for the deliverance of Cuba, and a thousandfold
more is it the recognition of this principle which
justifies, nay, demands, her intervention on a
vaster field to-day. Though the primary duties

AN AMERICAN FRIEND 19

of the individual are to the State to which he be-
longs, they rest on a basis that renders them ap-
plicable to all mankind. Miss Cavell's noble ut-
terance in the face of a violent death, "Patriotism
is not enough," is not only a statement of the first
principle of Christianity but of that which is now
at stake in this colossal struggle of the nations;
It is that which inspires the immortal message of
President Wilson, a prophet among statesmen,
that America should count among the things she
will fight for "the privilege of men everywhere
to choose their way of life and of obedience."
Democracy contains the promise of the only inter-
nationalism worth while — support of other com-
munities in proportion as they represent the same
ideal or through tyranny are prevented from pur-
suing it.

Thus democracy stands -for the belief that the
problem of statesmanship is as far as it goes
identical with that of religion, the saving of the
soul of man both in its individual and its social
aspects. It relies on the spirit, and on other forces
only in proportion as they serve its ultimate aim.
By this standard it tests its political institutions;
and by this standard it must also determine the
issues of war and peace.

This, and nothing less than this, is what is at
stake in the world to-day. Two ideals of living,
two spiritual creeds, two views of human worth

20 A LETTER TO

and destiny confront each other on the battlefield.
And just as In your War of Independence against
us by which you won your national autonomy, and
your later Civil War by which the one gap in your
Constitution was filled, so now to-day you are
fighting for the principle on which alone true and
lasting spiritual manhood can be built. Lincoln's
words on the field of Gettysburg are even more
patently and universally applicable to the present
world-war and your part in it than to the strug-
gle in which you were then engaged: "We here
highly resolve that the dead shall not have died
in vain, that the nation shall, under God, have a
new birth of freedom, and that the government of
the people, by the people, and for the people
shall not perish from the earth." Yours is the
unique and unspeakable privilege of being able to
say that as a nation you have never drawn the
sword for any other principle. May this be the
last time you will need to vindicate it, as indeed
it shall, if only we are unitedly and sufficiently
great of soul to persevere to the full attainment
of the glorious end we have set before us.

The tragedies of the war have stirred to its
depths the conscience of the entire civilised world
and have created a universal determination that no
opportunity shall be left when the settlement comes
for any renewal of the unimaginable calamities
we are now called upon to endure. The outstand-

AN AMERICAN FRIEND 21

ing abuses of the old order of things — the old se-
cret diplomacy and non-moral bargaining regard-
less of the wishes of the inhabitants of the terri-
tories handed over by treaty to this Power or that
— must be swept utterly away. Let all interna-
tional dealing be frank and open ; it is our greatest
safeguard. Let the glaring wrongs created by
past wars be drastically remedied — the Alsace-
Lorraine question, the dismemberment of Poland,
the cruel maltreatment of Armenia, to name only
a few. Most of all, statesmanship is now ripe for
the establishment of a League of Nations with
the one great object of maintaining peace and co-
ercing any Power that attempts to break it. The
main hope of such a League of Nations is that
America should take the lead therein; it would
give confidence to every small nation throughout
the world, for no one outside Germany could
question the disinterestedness of the United States
in this grave matter. To Great Britain It would
be sufficient to see her own ideals thus represented
and enforced by the most powerful nation on
earth.

The war has led directly to a much closer prac-
tical union of Great Britain with all the free self-
governing British dominions throughout the world,
a union which in the near future will be still more
complete. May comradeship in arms lead to a
similar permanent understanding between Great

22 A LETTER TO

Britain and the United States ! Why not? Why
not an international citizenship of the two great
branches of the Enghsh-speaking race? What is
to hinder it? What old-time prejudice can we re-
move, what institution can we reform so as to
bring it into line with yours? In some respects
yours would do well to come into line with ours —
but that we need not discuss.

Is there anything in our methods of govern-
ment anywhere which offends American sentiment
or is inconsistent with American ideals? Does
Ireland block the way, for instance, as some of
your publicists tell us? We beg you to make
closer acquaintance with the facts before you pass
judgment. Whatever may be true of ages past,
the British electorate is only too willing to deal
justly and fairly with Ireland. Nay, we might
even go so far as to trust President Wilson to
settle the whole Irish question for us if he would
undertake it; but would he? He would soon find,
if he does not know already, that it is not Eng-
land but Ireland herself that is disunited on this
question and cannot arrive at agreement. Eng-
land will do anything that Ireland wants if Ire-
land can only make up her mind as to what she
really does want. That is the real problem, and
there Is no other.

In the fearful time through which the world is
passing it is not Ireland that is having to suffer.

AN AMERICAN FRIEND 2S

but England, Scotland, and Wales, Canada, Aus-
tralia, South Africa. Leave one or two corners
of Ireland out of count and the contrast with the
sister kingdom is striking. One could not do bet-
ter than put it to you to say what proportionate
part Ireland is bearing in this war for the deliv-
erance of mankind from an ancient bondage.

It is long since Great Britain came to recognise
that she could not isolate herself from the rest of
the world. Now America too has realised that
she can no longer limit the sphere of her interest
to the Western Hemisphere, but must assume a
full responsibility with the rest of civilisation for
the shaping of the future of the undivided human
race. That future is in the balance at this mo-
ment, and but a little may tip the scales for or
against the sane and honest ideals of liberty and
justice, good comradeship and self-respect, mutual
trust and the will to universal happiness. Upon
the action of the three great democracies of the
worJd, America, France, and Great Britain, more
than upon all other facts and forces put together,
under God the decision waits.

Important Books of the Day

THE CRIME By a German, Author of "/ Accuse!"

An arraignment in even more cogent form than "I Accuse!" of the
rulers and governments of Germany and Austria,

Two vols. 8vo. Vol. I. Net, $2.50
THE GREAT CRIME AND ITS MORAL By J. Selden WiUmore

A volume which is an invaluable library. An illuminating summary of
the immense documentary literature of the war. 8vo. Net, $2.00

BELGIUM IN WAR TIME By Commandant De Cerlache De Gomery

Translated from the French Edition by Bernard Miall

The authoritative book essential to an understanding of the history, the
position and the sufferings of the country that will not die, the title of
the Norwegian and Swedish editions of this famous work set up under
fire. Illustrations, maps and facsimiles. 8vo. Net, $2.00

THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME By John Buchan

"Mr. Buchan's account is a clear and brilliant presentation of the whole
vast manoeuver and its tactical and strategic development through all
four stages." — Springfield Republican. Illustrated. 12mo. Net, $1.50

THE LAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW By D, Thomas Cur tin
Revealing the Germany of fact in place of the Germany of tradition;
telling the truth about Germany-in-the-third-year-of-the-war.

12mo. Net, $1.50

I ACCUSE ! (j'ACCUSE!) By a German

An arraignment of Germany by a German of the German War Party.

Facts every neutral should know. 12mo. Net, $1.50

THE GERMAN TERROR IN FRANCE By Arnold J. Toynbee

THE GERMAN TERROR IN BELGIUM By Arnold J. Toynbee

"From the facts he places before his readers, it appears conclusive that
the horrors were perpetrated systematically, deliberately, under orders,
upon a people whose country was invaded without just cause." — Phila-
delphia Public Ledger. Each Svo. Net, $1.00

TRENCH PICTURES FROM FRANCE Sy Major WnHam Redmond, M.P.

Biographical Introduction by Miss E. M. Smith-Dampier

A glowing book, filled with a deep love of Ireland, by one of the most
attractive British figures of the war. 12mo. Net, $1.25

WOUNDED AND A PRISONER OF WAR By an Exchanged Officer

The high literary merit, studious moderation and charming pe^jnality
of the author make this thrilling book "the most damning indictment of
Germany's inhumanity that has yet appeared." 12mo. Net, $1.25

MY HOME IN THE FIELD OF MERCY By Frances Wilson Huard

MY HOME IN THE FIELD OF HONOUR By Frances Wilson Huard

The simple, intimate, classic narrative which has taken rank as one of I
the few distinguished books produced since the outbreak of the war.

Illustrated. Each 12mo. Net, $1.35

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY Publishers New York ;

PUBLISHERS IN AMERICA FOR HODDBR 8C STOUGHTONI